Pick your market and name. The one decision you can't easily undo.

• A target market you've confirmed has the population and weekly activity to sustain a newsletter
• A niche decision (if your metro is big enough to need one) so you own a lane instead of covering nothing
• A name that's simple, memorable, and searchable, chosen from a real short list
• The .com domain to match, checked and bought

• A rough idea of the city or area you're drawn to (you'll pressure-test it, not just accept it)
• A way to check domain availability (any registrar's search box)
• A payment method for the domain (about $10 to $15 for the year)
• Claude or your AI tool of choice open, for the research and the name brainstorm
• An hour, and the discipline not to skip validation and jump to the fun part

Validate the market before you fall in love with a name.

The trap almost everyone falls into: they think of a cute name, buy the domain, and then discover the market underneath it can't support a business. Now they're emotionally committed to a name in a town with no events and three competitors. That's backwards.

It's two layers, and you validate them bottom-up:

        Name + Domain      ← the label. Fun, but worthless if the base is wrong.
             ▲
             │  (only after the base checks out)
             │
        The Market         ← population, weekly activity, competition.
                             THIS is what determines whether money is possible.

The market is the business. The name is just the label you put on it. So we size the market first, decide whether to niche down inside it, and only then name the thing. Do it in this order and you'll never fall in love with a label you have to peel off later.

Two things here are close to permanent: your name and domain can technically change, but doing it after you have subscribers and search rankings is painful and costs momentum. Treat them like they're locked. The market itself is the most permanent decision of all, it's the ground the whole business stands on.

The sweet spot: a metro population of roughly 300,000 to 1,000,000.

1. Pull the metro-area population (not just city limits, the area people actually identify with).
2. Gut-check weekly activity: concerts, markets, festivals, restaurant openings, community events. Enough to pick 10 to 16 genuinely interesting items a week without scraping the barrel.
3. Scout competition: search "[city] newsletter," "[city] events email," and look for "[city] events" accounts on Instagram. One or two sleepy competitors is fine (it proves demand). A dominant, beloved, active one is a yellow flag.

Two ways to niche:

• By geography: a side of town, a corridor, a set of neighborhoods, a cluster of suburbs people identify with.
• By demographic or angle: parents and families, the food-and-drink crowd, the outdoors crowd, young professionals.

The strongest niches combine both.

1. If you're over ~1M, write down two or three candidate niches (geographic, demographic, or a combo).
2. For each: is there enough weekly activity in just this slice to fill an issue? Can I credibly claim to be the voice for it?
3. Pick the one you can both cover well and want to live in.

The formula that works: [City] + a short, punchy 1-to-2-syllable word.

Look at the pattern: Spokane Pulse. The Bend Buzz. Naptown Scoop. City plus a single beat. Easy to say, easy to remember, obviously local.

1. Brainstorm at least 10 candidates. Use your AI tool to widen the list: "Give me 20 name ideas for a local newsletter in [city/niche], each [city] + a short punchy word, easy to say and search."
2. Read them out loud. The winner usually sounds right before it looks right.
3. Sit on your short list for a few hours. Don't buy on the first rush of excitement. The obvious one is usually still obvious later.
4. Pick one.

The pattern: full name, no spaces, .com. The OC Buzz lives at theocbuzz.com. Yours follows the same shape.

1. In any registrar's search box, check whether the .com for your top name is available.
2. Taken? This is exactly why you brainstormed 10+. Move to the next name rather than settle for a worse domain on a name you loved.
3. Found an available .com matching a name you're happy with? Buy it. About $10 to $15 for the year. The one small purchase in this module.
4. That's it for now. You don't need to point it anywhere yet, the next module wires it in.

Verification checklist.

Before you move on, you should be able to check every one of these honestly:

• Market sized: you know your metro population and it's workable (or you know exactly how you're adjusting for a smaller one)
• Activity confirmed: enough happening weekly to fill an issue with 10 to 16 genuinely good items
• Competition scouted: you know who else is in the space and you're comfortable with the gap you're filling
• Niche decided (if your metro needed one) and you can say it in one sentence
• Name chosen from a real short list, said out loud, sat on for a few hours
• .com bought, full name, matching the brand

All six true? You've made the hardest and most permanent decision in the whole build, and you've made it on evidence. Everything from here is construction.

Stand up the machine.

Next module: you'll create your publication on Beehiiv, connect the domain you just bought, set up email sending on a subdomain so your deliverability is bulletproof from day one, and get a clean landing page live. It's the weekend of one-time infrastructure that turns your name and market into an actual newsletter people can subscribe to.

Every landmine, one place.